


Nimble and Bright

by Triss_Hawkeye



Category: Transistor (Video Game)
Genre: Cloudbank, M/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-24
Updated: 2018-12-24
Packaged: 2019-09-26 02:28:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,698
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17133335
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Triss_Hawkeye/pseuds/Triss_Hawkeye
Summary: Asher and Grant investigate their latest person of interest.





	Nimble and Bright

**Author's Note:**

> My piece for the Supergiant Secret Santa gift exchange!
> 
> Best read while listening to this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zGTkAVsrfg8

“Well, look who’s lapping up the attention.” 

Even without seeing Asher’s face, Grant could hear the teasing smirk in his voice.

“I don’t really know what to _do_ with attention,” he muttered back. The latest gaggle of attendees had gone on their cheerful way but he didn’t particularly want anyone overhearing their conversation even so. “You know I work best behind the scenes.”

“Keeping the people happy, there and here.” There was a faint crackle over the earpiece when Asher chuckled, as if from some gentle interference. Not that it wasn’t perfectly functional, it was just the aesthetic of the thing—people liked it that way, artfully imperfect. Grant found it annoying. 

“Any sign of the main event yet?” Asher asked. “Haven’t seen anything from the press box yet, but then it’s the VIP lounge who’s going to get the closest encounter.” He sounded faintly jealous. “Sybil speaks so highly of her, and all I get to do is watch her from a distance.”

“Not yet,” Grant murmured, and then sighed. “Hold that thought. Some more people who want to speak to me. Asher, this is supposed to be one of my very few _non-work_ evenings.”

Asher’s answering laugh was still ringing in his ear as he temporarily turned the volume down. 

“Administrator Kendrell!” A small flock of well-dressed young socialites cornered him and he put on his most gracious smile.

“Looking forward to this evening’s entertainment?” he asked them. There was a general vague murmur of assent before one of the women laid a friendly hand on his arm.

“Mr Kendrell, you know, we’ve experienced a couple of odd glitches in Goldwalk over the past few days, I don’t know if you’ve—”

“I’ll be sure to look into as soon as I can,” he reassured them, feeling the strain at the edges of his mouth as his smile became markedly fixed. He waved them on their way and let it fall from his face again. 

He’d been in a bad mood all evening, grumbling all the way to the venue. He and Asher had taken the walkway over from Highrise (the one people were voting to replace with a metro line, but that was Cloudbank for you—always something that needed to change). The streets glowed green and gold beneath them as he complained about not getting to keep his new husband to himself for just one evening. Asher had laughed and slipped an arm around his own, kindly letting him vent as they meandered through the plant beds. 

“And look, look at this!” he exclaimed, diverting them to examine the slightly weathered brass handrail along the side of the walkway. “This is the perfect example of the problem.” Asher humoured him and bent down to examine the railing’s surface.

“It’s worn,” he observed, his voice taking on that inquisitive note that Grant loved, the one that indicated he’d just come up with a bundle of new questions.

“Right! And it’s not at all natural, of course. It’s all placed there by the artist, a perfect amount of weather and tarnish to give it texture, make it look well-loved. It would be the work of a moment—a moment!—to go into admin mode and find out exactly who designed it. It’s fake, it’s all brand new—just last week this whole area was under an entirely different colour scheme, amethyst instead of teal, and the handrails were three shades lighter and _entirely pristine!_ ” 

He felt a little ridiculous, ranting at a handrail, but he was in full swing now and had a long day’s worth of frustration to let out. “Wouldn’t it be better if the rail had stayed there, in the same fashion, since it was first made however many months ago? So that the weathering _meant_ something—that a thousand passers-by had leant on it and enjoyed the view?” As if trying to be helpful, a notification popped up informing him that the view had indeed been enjoyed 796 times. He fixed Asher with his “You see?” look, and his husband gave a sympathetic grimace in return. 

“Well, that’s what we’re working towards, isn’t it?” Asher said, running a hand up and down his back. “A Cloudbank with meaning. With purpose. That makes sense.”

They stood there a little while, leant on the railing and each other, their gazes following the warm orange-golden light of Highrise, through the spotlights and evening haze, down to the cyan-green windows of Goldwalk and the twinkling waters of the bay just beyond. They did enjoy the view.

Grant continued to mull over that conversation as he watched the VIP lounge fill up, listening to the murmur of background voices in one ear and Asher happily chatting with a colleague in the other. There was a subtle wave of gasps and whispers around the room, and he glanced at the door to see Sybil make her entrance with a striking woman on her arm—the newly rising star known only as Red. Sybil gave him the smallest twitch of her immaculate smile in acknowledgement, before sweeping Red into the room and introducing her to a carefully curated handful of Cloudbank’s finest. 

He’d only seen Red in the posters previously, but he could tell why Sybil liked her so much now. She was elegant and graceful, but carried herself with an ease and informality that seemed to make her instantly approachable to the people she met. She and Sybil made a stunning pair in white and gold, and were evidently on familiar terms with each other already. Grant saw Sybil make some sort of sly comment and Red throw back her head in laughter. 

“Main event’s here,” he murmured.

“Oh ‘scuse me, gotta take this,” he heard Asher say to whoever he was talking to. There was a shuffling noise then, “So, first impressions?”

“Hard to say so far. Seems to be—oh, coming this way. Check back later.”

His smile was back on his face in time for Sybil and Red to reach him. “Administrator Kendrell, may I introduce our principal artist this evening, Red.”

“Red, it’s a pleasure,” Grant said, offering a hand which Red shook warmly.

“It’s really all mine,” she replied. Her voice was softer than he’d expected. Maybe she was saving it for the performance. “I’m so grateful that you could take the time to come. I hope you won’t regret it.”

Grant found himself relaxing. “Not at all. I feel it would be a great shame to keep the city running and not experience the best it had to offer from time to time.”

“You’re too kind,” she said. Pleasantries successfully exchanged, Grant imagined she would swiftly move on. He could give her credit for appearing entirely genuine, at least, though he felt none the wiser about the sort of person she was. However, instead of moving away, she leaned in, lowering her voice a little more in a conspiratorial fashion. “By the way, Administrator, I must offer my congratulations!”

Sybil’s eyes widened slightly—not even she had expected this. Grant’s mouth hung open in surprise.

“Congratulations?” he managed eventually.

“On your marriage last week. That was you, right? Grant Kendrell and Asher Veriss?” 

Grant regained his composure even as he heard a small gasp from Asher in his ear. “I’m surprised anyone was aware of it,” he replied. “Neither of us wanted to make a fuss. But thank you.”

The singer beamed at him. “I saw it mentioned in the OVC notices,” she admitted. “I’m a rather avid reader. It… makes me feel like I have my finger on the pulse of the city. All the little things that make up people’s lives here.” She went quiet, looking pensive. “It’s… hard, sometimes, to put into words. How I see it, how it makes me feel, being here. The OVC are good at that—me, I find it easier to express it through music instead.”

Sybil smiled. “Oh Red, you say that like what you do isn’t completely magical.” They all shared a laugh at that, and Red reached out to pat his arm.

“It was so good to meet you. Please tell your husband that I love his work.”

“I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear it,” Grant replied, feeling like he could practically hear Asher blushing through his earpiece. “I look forward to the performance!”

A friendly wave, farewells, and she was gone again in a flicker of gold and crimson. Grant entered the auditorium buoyed with a renewed sense of anticipation. 

Red’s music wasn’t the type that Grant would ordinarily listen to, but he found himself absorbed all the same. Her voice was captivating, and her songs contained an undercurrent of frustration and bitterness he hadn’t been expecting. He hadn’t expected them to resonate so powerfully with him.

Grant found himself humming one of her final numbers around his toothbrush, long after he and Asher had wandered home, buzzing from music and champagne and each other’s company, and ordered in some late-night cheesecake since they didn’t fancy anything too substantial to eat, and fed it to each other while exchanging gossip about the evening. He could hear the opening chords, distorted and ethereal, and realised that Asher had put that same track on the music player, Red’s voice echoing ghost-like through the apartment. He finished up in the bathroom and found Asher laid sprawled out on the bed, looking up at the lights playing on the ceiling with a distant and thoughtful expression. 

Grant joined him, placing his head over his husband’s chest and an arm across his waist, feeling the rise and fall of his breathing and letting the music take them both over the city. He could see the lights stretch out below them in his mind’s eye, the delicate shades of each district bleeding into one another, a nebula of buildings shining in the midnight blue of the sea, shifting and changing like iridescence, like a living thing, nimble and bright and breathtakingly beautiful. 

“She gets it,” Asher murmured. “Everything that worries us, everything we want to make right. But it’s out of love. She really loves this city. Just like us.”

Grant hummed in agreement. “She’s perfect.”

**Author's Note:**

> Merry Christmas, Supergiant fans!
> 
> Say hi to me on tumblr [@trisshawkeye](https://trisshawkeye.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
